Lecture/ Tutorial/ Reflection

ACCESSIBILITY AND DESIGN

This week lecture is based on Accessibility and Design and it was done by Geneen. Starting off she gave us a brief idea that will be doing Video editing after returning from Christmas. But the lecture was focused on Disabled people and their accessibility to the Internet world. It was a good point to take notice off, as many of us would not think of disabled people when developing a website. Thinking of people's who are colour blind its really hard for them to visit football clubs websites, as they design the website on the football clubs uniforms for example Liverpool football club website is red and this may cause problem to colour blind people. Now the government has passed a law the DDA (Disability and Discrimination Act) in 1995 and it was updated in 2001 the Special educational needs and disability Act. Since then the technology have helped disabled people by designing products for special need people for example a keyboard for a person with one arm and Voice recognition software for people who don't have both the arms. Also now the websites should be design considering the Law against Disability Discrimination, you can use Bobby software on websites which detect problem which causes to Disabled people.

FLASH

In today's tutorial we followed the lecture 9 which was Tween in Tween. The aim of today's tutorial was to show how to place a symbol within a symbol. You can do this by typing a word on stage and then go to modify and choose convert to symbol and type a name for a file as for me it was web. Click OK then delete the file it will be saved in Library so it is safe. We then click to insert and choose New symbol and make sure that its on movie clip then click OK. Then you can drag the file from library and then Right click on frame 10 and move the image or word anywhere you want, then click on the center of frame and from bottom choose Create motion, test the movie and save it. Then repeat the steps again to create more symbols and when finished click scene1 also you can differentiate Graphic and Movie clip by its logo.

REFLECTION

The main aim of the lecture was to design website which are Accessibale to diabled people and easy for them to use. This point is ignored by many of us, but now there are laws which protect the rights of disable people and now their are many new products which are coming for easy use for handicaped people aswell. Continuing with the tutorial we leran how to tween in tween and considering the lecture I used light colour to help colour blind people see without any difficulties.

Lecture/ Tutorial/ Reflection

Evaluation of Usability

This week's lecture was based on Evaluation of Usability. The lecturer told us when designing or developing something new, we should think in a context of user. As he gave couple of examples, i.e. Watch, Baton and my favorite one Shoe, it is light and it should be water proof thanks to the climate in U.K. and the most unnoticeable thing is that we are still using the 4,000 year old technology which is shoe laces. The Lecturer continued his lecture explaining:

• Evaluation and its usability


• How do users perform tasks


• Comparing Designs
  
• Predict Usability of System


• Qualitative Evaluation


• Inspection


• Users Performance

He explained his point saying when designing you should evaluate who are the users going to be, keep the instructions simple and in which environment is the design going to be used. For e.g. a Ticket machine on a Train station which is used by many different aged people and that its goes through different weather condition's as well.

FLASH

In today's Tutorial we were told that we will use Flash. We started off by selecting Action script 2, and then we followed the notes which were provided on blackboard. The task was to firstly select the background of the Page (Note: Pages in Flash are called Frames, but either way it is same) and then we have to write a Text on Frame 1 and add a button from window and then common library. Then we have to create a second Frame to that right click on film line and add key frame write a different text on frame two and add button again. Follow the same step to create more Frames, then test the movie but frame will run nonstop and you can see anything clearly. Then next step was to add the stop the auto play movie on frame. then finally we attach action script to the buttons, than we have tested the movie, and we repeated the same procedures to each frame, save it and test the movie again this time the users can control the movie.

REFLECTION

Lecture was the contiuation from preveiously taught Usability Intereaction to Evaluation of Usability, the main idea was to design in a context of a user, and that it should fulfill the desires of the users for example if you take a Game Part 1 and when you'll make Game Part 2 you will do a research what was lacking in the previous game and what new ideas could be added and how to improve the game over all. As per for the Tutorial this week was a change after going through the Checklist and Evaluation and Usability of Glamorgan websites in last two weeks. Flash is intresting as we learn how to link one frame to second frame and how to add actions script to buttons.

Two external links on Usability:

1) Google

2) University of Glamorgan